LET ME SAY “MENSTRUATION”. Hygiene education for facing cultural taboos.

Nowadays, our society still finds difficult to tackle the "menstruation" discourse. Although they are natural, cyclical and common in every woman, even today it is not easy to talk freely about this topic. All over the world, the female gender must face something that represents them negatively every month. In the United States, a research was carried out in the 1990s in which it was sought to understand what the opinion among students was about menstruation. As if they are something natural, they are at the same time annoying. Women during the period should lead their lives normally without having to show menstruation. Thus, instead of celebrating the cyclical nature of being a woman, they must ignore the phenomenon so as not to neglect husband, children and work. On the contrary, however, during the menstrual cycle a woman undergoes strong hormonal changes, the body consumes a lot of energy and the feeling of exhaustion is stronger than usual, the area of ​​the belly at the uterus swells and often hurts, indeed many women suffer from very intense pains in the lower abdomen (premenstrual syndrome).In short, for about six to eight days a month, woman undergoes a change in her body. She can lead her life normally but that does not mean she has to hide what she is going through. What we are talking about is recognized as a cultural taboo. This is also demonstrated by the use of different euphemisms such as "menses" or "period" or the prestige games that women make to go to the bathroom with a sanitary napkin to change, hoping to avoid to show it. The social exclusion of women during menstruation is rooted in many cultures but a particular cultural taboo is recognized in India. Menstruation, in addition to being an "off-limits" topic in education, also find a lack of facilities that together exacerbate the maintenance of intimate hygiene. Behind social exclusion and cultural taboos, religious and cultural practices play an important role.In fact, during menstruation many women cannot perform normal religious functions, Muslims cannot touch the Koran and many cannot enter places of worship where to pray. 

We are talking taboo because many women are not informed before the menarche to prepare themselves psychologically. In fact, many girls when they have the cycle for the first time remain traumatized by what happens to them. According to a purely cultural aspect, everything that expels our body is impure and dirty, which is why our body intends to eliminate it by making it come out. This means that menstruation is something dirty and impure that comes out of a woman's body and is itself impure and dirty. In India, many women when they have the cycle cannot enter the kitchen and cook because they can spread "diseases", touch the fruit or vegetables because they become rotten, or they poison the food; they cannot touch plants because they die, but not even sacred animals.

The first experience of the menstrual cycle is not pleasant: you lose for the first time a lot of blood from parts of your body little known; the pain can be mild but annoying and you do not know what you're feeling pain for; you do not know what to wear because your clothes are stained and you cannot walk without having something that can absorb the blood; It's embarrassing because you do not want anyone to know, otherwise you could be judged. Think about it without having ever heard about “Menstruation”. Many girls could think about an illness.

According to a purely cultural aspect, everything that expels our body is impure and dirty, which is why our body intends to eliminate it by making it come out. It’s true, our body is programmed to expel the impurities, but the fact that it is capable of it is a positive aspect.However, this means that menstruation is considered as something dirty and impure that comes out of a woman's body and is itself impure and dirty. In India, many women when they have the cycle cannot enter the kitchen and cook because they can spread "diseases", touch the fruit or vegetables because they become rotten, or they poison the food; they cannot touch plants because they die, also sacred animals.

However, the problem gets worse when girls in schools do not have separate baths and only about half of the schools in India own them. Without separate baths the girls have no privacy to wash or change their dirty clothes. Furthermore, in rural areas girls do not have sanitary towels, they use dirty fabrics, sand, sawdust, dust, leaves to tamp with menstrual flow and use water to contaminate to wash their private parts. All this causes vaginal infections or sexually transmitted diseases that, due to embarrassment, are not treated.

As a result, 113 million young girls leave school when they reach puberty. A recurring fact is that only 12%, out of a total of about 350 million women who have a menstrual cycle, use sanitary pads, above all for their high cost, unattainable for the lower caste. To counter this situation, campaigns are taking place in the country to make the sanitary towels accessible to all women and above all to spread education in schools. In fact, the idea of ​​HEEALS NGO is to start from the education of Menstrual Cycle Management in schools and distribute absorbers to girls in village and rural schools. Education is a fundamental element for the awareness of girls who often find themselves facing a traumatic and panic experience during their first menstrual cycle. In fact, according to the 2016 international weekly magazine Newsweek, 70% of girls in India have never heard of menstruation before their arrival. Keeping girls from the menstrual cycle in the dark is also due to the desire to prevent awareness of their sexuality and the possibility of becoming mothers. This attitude is adopted especially in rural areas where girls are given in brides at 13-14 years as soon as they have menstruated and consequently leave school. The achievement of puberty is seen as the right time to start taking care of the family and looking after the home professions.

Finally, although it is one of the most natural thing in the world, in India, as in several other countries and for several religions, the menstrual cycle remains a taboo. The woman "in those days" is isolated from society, or feels uncomfortable in the environment in which she lives. For this reason there are awareness campaigns such as that of Sushmita Dev, a politician and a member of the Indian National Congress, which intends to guarantee Indian women the possibility of having free sanitary towels. In addition, various humanitarian organizations, such as HEEALS, have begun to make available free or low-cost women's sanitary napkins and awareness campaigns to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal no 5 for gender equality, hoping to make women free to express themselves, guaranteeing them the right to feel the benefits from awareness by giving the correct education to face personal intimate hygiene as any other day.

Elisa Stucchi-